


Forget Me Not

by katnisspond



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Ben Hanscom Loves Beverly Marsh, Chronic Hanahaki Disease, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, F/M, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Mike Hanlon is a Good Friend, Munchausen by proxy, Non-Explicit Vomiting, Non-fatal hanahaki disease, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Stanley Uris Is A God Among Men, The Losers Club have Hanahaki Disease, blame the big bang server for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23221933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katnisspond/pseuds/katnisspond
Summary: This is not angsty!!! In a universe where hanahaki disease is common, the Losers Club experiences 27 years of thorough confusion as to why they have hanahaki but no one to attribute it too! This is the transcript of Richie's first stand up back, detailing his own lifelong foray with forget me nots.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh (implied), Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon (Implied), Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 6
Kudos: 58





	Forget Me Not

**Author's Note:**

> I puttered out at the end but overall, I think I got the just :) Big props to Effy on the Reddie Big Bang server for this god tier concept!

[Lights go up and the crowd goes wild as Richie exits from stage left. The front row is reserved for 6 people, all clad in pajamas as a running joke from an earlier talk show interview they’d done as a group. Richie is also clad in sleepwear with soft flannel pants and a dark grey T-Shirt with the tour name emblazoned across it in pink font ‘Trashmouth: Finally F*cking Flower Free’]

Hello, hello, New York City! How goes it in the Big Apple, huh?

[The audience cheers. Richie grins and takes a deep breath before starting the set that would give the official sink or swim verdict for his entire career. There was a lot on the line.]

Now, I know you’re all wondering why I coated the ill-fated front row in flowers at the end of my last tour! And then left! Abruptly! Well, I could explain the many trials and tribulations my friends and I faced at the official Losers Club reunion- 

[Richie pauses for the overwhelming excitement at that one. He dons a shit eating grin.]

Or I can systematically complain about hanahaki disease for an hour and refuse to give anything more than vague details of nothing remotely important! Buckle up, buckaroos, we’re talking flower petals tonight! 

So as many of you know, ever since I first hit the spotlight, I was known for my constant upchucking of forget me nots at any given moment more so than my comedy. The tabloids were constantly up my ass trying to figure out who Trashmouth Tozier had been pining for since the dawn of time. And you want to hear the truth? 

[The crowd cheers]

I had no fucking clue. No, no, I’m serious. I legitimately had no recollection of any human who I’d ever looked at and said, ‘Yeah, I’d totally become a florist for 30 years over that ass. Being able to provide all the flowers for my best bud’s wedding arch via my esophagus sounds fun. Maybe decorate the stage for my shows to look like a springtime funeral, that’ll be great!’ 

For real, though. During the summers especially, I’d either have a bucket up here with me to just- Yup, hold on guys! 

[Richie mimics vomiting into a trashcan to the crowd’s amusement. Once he’s ‘done’ he pauses, then suddenly goes back to doing it with truly graphic sound effects. After that, he looks out at the crowd and pauses for a moment before raising the mic]

Gross right? 

[Richie pauses again for the laughter to quiet down] 

So there was the bucket method, or there was what I like to call, the pixie dust. Any time my throat suddenly decided to claw itself inside out, I’d come up to the front of the stage like so- 

[As he walks up to the front row, he grabs a few flower petals from his back pocket and holds them in his palm.] 

And I’d pull this fantasy wizard shit. 

[Richie opens his palm and blows the flower petals at the Losers. Eddie swats them away while one lands on Ben’s nose, grabbing everyone’s attention save for he who was still pissily fussing with the one floating in front of his face.] 

Awww, Haystack you caught one! And some of these fuckers up here had it bad too but I’m not there yet. So basically, I spent my entire career playing fairy, ironically, or imitating a seasick grandma on her sixth Bahama Mama at least twice a night. I had so many prepared interruption jokes too. ‘Sorry everybody, I knew I shouldn’t have had the airport sushi,’ or ‘I guess I might have to call back that last one night stand, huh’. They were cringey and bad but I had absolutely no other choice. 

So by the time I was kicking ass on that last tour, life was going… swell. I’ll be completely honest with you all, I was in a very bad place a year ago. Career wise? God no, I was thriving. In fact, and this one really killed my manager, Netflix was recording that last show that I ran out on.

[Most of the audience cringes at that one as a murmur passes through] 

I know right! I busted the one show I had to make count! And you know what? I’m happy it fell through! I know that sounds like that self-empowerment bullshittery. ‘You can’t fire me, I quit!’ or, ‘I’m better off without him anyway!’ after he cheated on my ass. But, no, it’s actually true and I’m not afraid to say it. I’m glad that that shitty tour died on the road. 

[Audience gets a little restless.] 

You wanna know why? It literally starts with a segment about my girlfriend getting angry over my hanahaki and attributing it to falling in love with a porn star. Quality stuff, right? 

[Crowd cheers sarcastically. Richie nods and steels himself for the most rehearsed part of his act.] 

It’s actually the lowest point in my career. Yes, the lowest point in, I repeat, my career. You know, the one built off of dick jokes and some of the raunchiest humor major streaming networks will allow. Hell, I even dipped into some homophbic shit back in 2009! Twitter doesn’t even bother cancelling me because I was already instantly disqualified from being woke when I opened my mouth on screen for the first time!

But yes, that segment was the lowest point of my career because for six shows straight, I absolutely dragged ‘Ashley’ for our stingy relationship. How we wouldn’t have sex for tedious, annoying reasons, or how she made me hang with her friends one time and it sucked. I literally became one of those assholes who go up onstage just to complain about their partners and it was genuinely bad comedy in the first place!

The thing is, there are a few discrepancies with the script. 

First of all, a majority of my friends are women because I cannot stand the dudebros I’d presented myself as a part of. It’s fucking hilarious when you step back for a second and realize that I, a lanky middle aged nasily man who voluntarily wears shitty patterned button ups on a daily basis and looks vaguely like a muppet -convinced thousands that I would genuinely hang out with a bunch of gym rats and talk about- what? Cars and shit? I was wearing a Star Trek Enterprise T-Shirt on tour one night and no one stopped and thought, “Huh. This comedian a-hole vomiting his toes up onstage looks exactly like someone those guys would heckle in a Safeway parking lot. Has he ever even seen a car engine on Google, let alone one in real life?”

The answer is yes… as of last Monday, when Eddie got pissed that the oil hadn’t been changed. 

[The crowd lost it at that.] 

And yeah, Eddie is one of our little Loser’s club members but we’ll get to that later. I am not friends with dudebros and the shitty storyline of that set was borderline discriminatory. Big apologies there, ladies, but I was compensating in all the wrong directions. 

Secondly, and this one’s a real kicker, Ashley doesn’t fucking exist!

[The audience was genuinely shocked.]

You heard me! Ashley what’s-her-nuts something-or-other isn’t even real. Nor was it my idea to write her into the act! Of course I’m not going to attempt a relationship with anyone when I’m yacking flowers on the reg for some stranger I don’t even know out there! I was 90% sure my flower machine was just broke or very confused or something but the point still stands! 

And that, my friends, brings us to the final controversy and why I, Richard Wentworth Tozier, sincerely fucked up debuting that set at all. 

I never have, nor will I ever date an Ashley. 

[The crowd laughs, thinking that was the joke. Richie takes it in for a few seconds and gathers himself.]

Because I am actually gay.

[The crowd drops into silence, but one man, Stanely Uris in the front row, doesn’t hesitate to be the first to stand and clap. Everyone else almost instantly catches a hint and joins him. Richie beams as whoops and hollers sound.]

Yeah, never thought I’d ever say that out loud. Sorry to all the mags convinced I was in love with Shakira because I brought her up so much on SNL, but that was just the gay peaking through. 

[The audience laughs and people begin to sit down again. In the back row an old couple scoots towards the exit but honestly, Richie only feels bad for them. No refunds, bitches.]

So I, a gay, closeted comedian, continued to vomit flowers with still no clue as to why. Maybe I was lacking self love all along? Maybe I had a longing for one of the gym rats I romanticized in my set? Who knows? I didn’t! 

And then Mike called. Mikey Mike Mike Mikey. The man with a relatively shitty plan that surprisingly resulted in our favor. You see, we were all childhood friends back in the rural, homophobic, racist, anti-semietic and general shithole that was Derry, Maine. An old comedian coming out in 2017? You can thank Derry for that. And in this little backwoods hick petri dish of a town, we formed the Loser’s club. It consisted of our fearless leader and general hoe Bill Denborough - say hi Bill! Then our fabulous Ms. Beverly Marsh and her longtime secret admirer, Ben Hanscom, our resident mom friend Stanley Uris and our resident dad friend Mike Hanlon. And finally, comes my personal favorite, our resident hypochondriac and tiny ball of anger issues, Eddie Kaspbrack. 

[Rather than standing with the others, Eddie raised a middle finger, garnering even further laughter from the audience.]

God, he’s just so charming, isn’t he. Basically, we were childhood friends, who faced enough trauma as kids to physically block any memory of our teens! True story! Only Mike remembered any of what happened in highschool beyond what our teachers drilled into our brains! And the seven of us were all misfits in our own rights. The town bullies hated us- so much so that 27 years later one stabbed a knife into Eddie’s cheek. 

[The audience gasps.] 

Yeah, that sucked. Luckily Eddie’s got a badass scar now and I may or may not have had to save Mike’s life by lodging a tomahawk in the back of our dear town bully’s skull. The legal aspect of the tour cancellation was self-defensive homicide for anyone wondering. I can’t even say that shit keeps me up at night after he spent the entirety of my sophomore year spray painting the f-slur on my locker repeatedly. 

Not to mention when a house fell and impaled our dear Eddie, as if the stabbing wasn’t enough PTSD for one guy. Nope, this fucker had a hole through his chest and still pulled through. Take that Sonia, you Munchausen By Proxy bitch. 

[Richie let that sit for a few seconds before leaning back on a barstool at centerstage nonchalantly]

But I’m getting completely off track, aren’t I? Hanahaki disease, am I right? Hate that shit. You know, almost all of us Losers had it in the 27 years we’d been separated. Bill, the wimp, had his surgically removed. Like, Buddy. You’re an author. What, were the petals crowding up your keyboard? Try running a serious set about fucking your neighbor’s mother and randomly dousing your audience in froget-me-nots, jackass! 

Ever since we were kids, Ben would cough up a single red rose whenever he thought about loving someone. The romantic fucker. Eddie and I would vomit a bouquet and this dickweed got away with a single red rose bud and called it a day. So unfair! 

Unfortunately, thanks to self esteem issues courtesy of Derry, Maine, he never told Beverly how he felt back when we were kids, hence why he spent the next 27 years with his elegant ‘one rose affliction, bright red like Beverly’s hair. 

[The crowd cooed.]

Uh huh. Cute, right? Meanwhile, me and my bestest bud Eddie are known for literally vomiting our feelings since the day we were born. Like, seriously, Eddie’s mom was convinced that he was genuinely sick or something. She developed, as I previously mentioned, Munchausen by Proxy. That means she coddled him half to death, made him take insane amounts of medication, and then convinced him that his subsequent health driven panic attacks were actually asthma attacks that could be fixed with an inhaler. 

Imagine having the balls to hand your kid an inhaler and say, ‘Yeah that’ll fix it,’ only to continue telling him all the bajillion ways he was gonna die! I- I did not like this woman! Hence the origin of my most famed motif, the ‘I fucked your mother’ jokes. 

Anyway, Bill was once married to a woman who he genuinely liked. His little anti-flower procedure got wrecked when Mike called though and he vomited so many yellow pansies, he put Eddie and I to shame. Audra kicked his ass to the curb. When Mike called me, I dropped a shit ton of forget me nots on a car outside the venue, then a boatload more on the front row of the audience before I had to quit talking just to breathe through them. Eddie had gotten married about ten years back to she-who-will-not-named. They divorced two years later over the constant flowers because he had it just as bad as I did, but then again, she was abusive so… all's well that ends well, right? When Mike called, Eddie, of course, crashed his fucking car thanks to a shit ton of Lilies. Beverly coughed up Amaranthus while on her phone that night so Rogan, ya know, the abusive asshole who hit the papers three months ago, left three bruises before she could get out of the house. 

Most romantic of all, poor Mikey was dropping zinnias after every call. 

Mike had called us in for a very important Loser’s Club reunion. Were there ulterior motives that we’d agreed upon through a blood pact as tweens? Yes. Will I be discussing those motives? No. I don’t want to wind up in a mental facility after having admitted to braining a guy with a tomahawk not even ten minutes ago. 

[By this point, the story is so unbelievable that most of the audience just laughs along, not quite sure how to comprehend the real gravity behind these situations. Their reactions will be much more sincere over Twitter the following morning]

We agreed to meet up at our lovely little town’s Chinese restaurant. An unrelated fact, by the way, we all have refused to eat Chinese food ever since. Please, for the love of god, never offer a Loser’s Club member Chinese food. It’s offensive to us at this point. 

Mike’s the first to go off before I even get there. His zinnias set off Bill’s pansies. Outside, I get to watch Beverly and Ben lock eyes and ta-da! Flood of amaranthus and roses. Really pretty combo by the way. It takes me going inside the restaurant and seeing Eddie for shit to really hit the fan. By the time this little vomit-fest had concluded, we were pretty positive we were about to getting fuckin’ sued by the restaurant for having turned them into a temporary florist. 

Then, in all his glory, in strides Stanley Uris. No flowers for us fuckers, just a ring on his finger and a content smile to see his friends again. The douchebag had been flower free since he coughed a single daisy and asked Patty out instantly that day, somewhere off in college after we’d already repressed our childhoods. 

And can I just say, I have never seen that man look so disappointed. Flowers everywhere, all of us queasy and ready to legitimately die, and here stands the only functional member of our group. We love our Stan the Man. 

He was also the first and at that point only Loser to know I was gay. I’d gotten punched - we were 13 at the time - for having hit on a guy in the arcade. He was totally vibing with it, I mean, we were on round 6 of Mortal Kombat and I’m 90% sure he was flirting back… but his cousin was the town bully. Who stabbed Eddie 27 years later. Needless to say, he was a helluva cockblock. But, ya know, spoilers. 

Teary-eyed, gay, teenager Richie decides to carve a set of initials on the kissing Bridge. Very masculine experience. 10/10 would recommend for all boys as insecure as I was at the time. So I carve them and they’re there forever… and I panic… so I did the only sensible thing I could think of and went to talk to the great oracle, Stan. 

27 years later, he saw the forget me nots I’d covered an entire table with and looked directly at me with even more sympathy than when Ben had an H carved into our stomach decades earlier. And no, I will not be giving that traumatic experience any context. Deal with it, fuckers. 

Because of our shared trauma, we’d all completely forgotten one another, yet there was no love lost along with our memories. No, we all struggled with the constant pain in the ass that was hanahaki. But there was a pretty special story when it came to mine and Eddie’s because it had always been there. Always. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t having forget me nots bust my throat at 4 in the morning or sneezing out at least one flower every time I was sick. 

I also can’t remember a time when I hadn’t known Eddie though. We’ve been best friends since birth! Our fathers knew each other before we even existed! Deep down, we both knew what that had to mean. After decades, we finally found the source of our affliction. Right before Eddie would supposedly breathe his last, a literal hole through his chest, bleeding out of the pavement, he looked up at me with tears in his eyes that held pain from 27 year of us being forcefully separated from one another and said…

I fucked your mom. 

[The crowd bursts the tense atmosphere with laughter as Richie reenacts his reaction at the time.] 

Ex-fucking-cuse me?! Those are your last words?! I have been coughing up forget me nots over your little anal retentive, fanny pack wearing ass for my entire exsistence and those are your last words?! 

So here’s how I respond. You know, last chance to tell the love of your life that it had been him all along, no pressure, right? I lay a hand on the wound he’d gotten while saving my life and I say… 

Well, that’s gonna make the family reunion a little awkward. 

[The audience cheers.] 

Our entire lives have been irrevocably thrashed by hanahaki disease over each other and as he was dying, we still diverted to fucking mom jokes. This man was built for me, I swear to god! Luckily, Bev can hotwire a car and we make it to the hospital fast enough for Eddie to be revived 3 times so that was neat. When the nurse announced that he’d survived it, I fully expected to hack up a bouquet to place at his bedside… But I didn’t. In the end, after all the years we’d bickered and poked fun at each other, we really had exchanged our own little I love you that day. I’m pretty positive that I’m one of very few people who can say this. 

I never said I love you, and nor had he, but we knew well enough, so the hanahaki gave it a rest for the first time in 40 years. 

[The effect clearly wasn’t lost on the audience as they roared to life. Richie grinned.] 

So there you have it folks! We confessed our love for each other through a shitty joke from our childhood with the love of my life on the verge of death right in front of me and we haven’t coughed up flowers since! For the first time in our entire lives! Now, I know you all wanted way more info on the Losers Club from this gig- I mean, why else would you still be in the audience right now, so it’s time to switch gears to a creepy old house down the way called Neibolt....

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, he continues on to delve into the clown stuff but my hand hurts so just,,, use your imagination plz.


End file.
